Doesn't a Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR) need more anti-ship weapons?
The Marines say every Marine is a rifleman. But as the Pacific Marines transform into a full partner with the Navy to kill Chinese warships, shouldn't every Marine be a ship-killer? I've mentioned this issue many times before, but this seems odd:
One Marine littoral regiment has already been set up in Hawaii, the second would be in Okinawa and another is planned later this decade, with a possible location being Guam, according to officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not publicly announced.
Details are still being worked out, but a littoral regiment is made up of roughly 2,000 Marines, and includes a combat team with an anti-ship missile battery, a logistics battalion and an air defense battalion. [emphasis added]
In close cooperation with a revived and reoriented Japanese military, an entire Marine division is now dedicated to penning the Chinese navy closer to the coast by operating on islands throughout the western Pacific.
But don't get me going on how the Marines plan to move and supply elements of the MLR around. I addressed that in Proceedings in 2017. Interestingly enough, the Army will send 13 vessels with 300 troops to help move the Marines and Japanese around.
And a MLR has only a single infantry battalion in the combat team. So the entire division is focused on supporting the anti-ship mission. Is the job of assaulting enemy-held islands falling on the West Coast Marine division?
But I digress.
What bothers me is that the redesigned division will only have three anti-ship missile batteries (I assumed this means NMESIS, and that is the case). Three air defense battalion is great. But the anti-ship weapons represent far fewer launchers than a single American destroyer has (90+ Vertical Launching System cells).
Compare this structure to the mere 449 Marine defenders of Wake Island in 1941 who had six 5" guns for hitting ships, twelve 3" anti-aircraft guns, and 12 fighter planes that could also attack ships in addition to air defense and surveillance. That was an emphasis on firepower to kill ships and defensive firepower to protect the ship-killers.
Yes, I know that HIMARS that are part of the MLR could have anti-ship capabilities. So there could be more than just one battery of weapons capable of hitting ships per regiment. And Marine F-35Bs can operate from temporary air bases. Plus drones, of course.
Perhaps splitting up a MLR's anti-ship battery into single launcher sections (8?) with supporting infantry, air defense, and other assets in something as small as a platoon-sized formation is all that the Navy will be able to move around. The units aren't supposed to be static, after all. Relocating is part of how they avoid getting killed inside China's missile envelope and pose unexpected threats to the Chinese navy. So too many Marine units setting up expeditionary advance bases might be more than the Navy can support.
Assuming we can fight through that Chinese anti-ship and anti-air capability to insert, resupply, and extract the small units.
And yes, I understand that an important role in establishing a Marine "kill web" in the western Pacific will be detecting Chinese ships for naval and aircraft shooters.
So it is entirely possible that I'm missing something really important that isn't being conveyed in the articles I read. I hope my worries are based on ignorance. I really do hope that is the case. This is an issue my brain looks for as I track defense issues. So I'll notice something if it contradicts my worries. And I'll write that up.
But those articles that I do see repeatedly so far mention a single dedicated MLR anti-ship battery. That worries me. It seems to me that when an entire division is focused on coastal defense it should have more specific capabilities to kill ships than the MLR is designed to deploy.
It seems to me that the Western Pacific Marines could have retained one conventional Marine regiment in Hawaii and still squeezed three (or, be still my heart, four) anti-ship batteries into two MLRs, one on Okinawa and one on Guam.
I'll also ask why the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) isn't being used to establish coastal defense platoons and companies? They could be plugged into a MLR. This was part of that 2017 article I mentioned.
As Napoleon might have said, when you start to reorganize a Marine division to kill ships, reorganize the division to kill ships.
But that's just me.
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
